Mood Media Gets Retail Music, Digital Signage Working Together With New Harmony CMS

October 2, 2019 by Dave Haynes

Austin, TV-based Mood Media has come up with an interesting cross-media solution aimed at making it easier to control a variety of “experiences” in retail settings off of a single platform.

Called Harmony, the software and underlying technology platform lets retail operators “connect and manage all of their in-store content – including music, messaging, visuals and interactive components – through one singular content management system.”

The idea is to get away from the clunky process of using different systems to do different things – like in-store audio from one platform and digital signage off another.

“Our new Harmony platform alleviates major pain points that many retailers and other consumer-facing businesses deal with due to having to use multiple vendors and systems,” says David Hoodis, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Mood Media. “With our new end-to-end offering, brands gain the unprecedented ability to manage all of their tech-powered in-store experiences in one place, via an easy-to-use dashboard.”

Mood Media is at the same time debuting a Harmony A/V Media Player that can do music, HD video, HTML5, RSS feeds, and live streaming.

“This device is the newest hardware option within our Harmony platform, which gives our clients – including those in retail, QSR, automotive, healthcare and hospitality industries – a true one-stop-shop where they can operate all of their in-store solutions from a single multimedia platform, significantly reducing IT headaches and interoperability costs,” says Trey Courtney, Global Chief Product & Partnership Officer of Mood Media. “With these latest innovations, businesses can now have a complete all-in-one solution to execute their branded in-store experiences. And, they can rest assured that their customers are enjoying an interactive shopping experience that is truly cohesive and complementary to their brand.”

This would fall into the solution to a problem bucket, which is much better than the solutions looking for problems that drop into my email inbox pretty regularly. Busy people like simplicity, and one of the very evident trends in this industry is the desire of end-users to minimize the number of solutions providers and tools. So putting audio and video off one CMS is a good thing.

I do not know if this is all that new. Seems like companies like 11 Giraffes have had audio and signage off of one CMS for many years, and companies like Montreal-based Stingray and Tampa-based Spectrio have both in-store audio and signage offers. I DON’T know if they are managed off one platform, though.